


Night at the Estate

by Patomac



Series: Writer's Month 2020 [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Patomac/pseuds/Patomac
Summary: After the attack, Phaelin's not doing well. Callie doesn't realize how not well until she wakes one night to the sound of him screaming.
Relationships: OC/OC
Series: Writer's Month 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1862173
Kudos: 1
Collections: Writer's Month 2020





	Night at the Estate

**Author's Note:**

> For Writer's Month Day 7: Hurt/Comfort

I woke to an anguished moan.

I laid in my bed, blinking back the haze of sleep. The sliding door to my balcony was wide open, and the damp air of fall snatched at the curtains. A faint buzz of insects in the distant forest shimmered in the still night.

My forehead creased. The harvest was over, and the estate was nearly empty. Elidis and her retinue were in the Anapoli for the annual assembly. She’d left behind a skeleton crew of servants to handle the upkeep on the manor and the grounds, but the staff quarters were in another building on the other end of the property. Surely none of them would be beneath my window in the middle of the night.

I threw back the covers and stood up, snatching my robe off a chair. I wrapped it around myself and crossed to the balcony door. Outside, night hung thick over the estate. No lamplight spilled from any of the manor’s windows, and no torches bobbed through the fields. The reddish swirl of the galaxy arced above the tree line.

I waited in the stillness. Maybe I’d imagined the sound. Maybe it had just been an animal crossing through the fields below.

Another cry echoed from my right.

“Please!” Phaelin yelled. “Please, no!”

My blood turned to ice. I seized my contraband blaster out of my drawer and flew down the hall. Phaelin’s room was the third on the left. His door was shut tightly, but I could hear him moving inside, tossing and turning.

I threw open the door to his chambers.

No one was there.

My eyes swept the room. Darkness swallowed the bed and the body inside it, but enough light filtered through the door from outside to for me to see that there was no one here. No assailants stood over Phaelin, blaster pointed to his head. He was fine.

I took a tentative step towards the bed. Phaelin’s arms thrashed as if he were trying to swim across a lake. His legs were tangled in the covers, but he kicked at them furiously, as if they were chains tying him in place.

I debated for about half a second before I set the blaster down and leaned toward the bed. “Phaelin,” I said. “Wake up.”

He grunted. One of his arms swiped at me in a wide arc.

I caught it. “Phaelin,” I said, louder this time. “Come on. You’re having a nightmare.”

He came awake all at once. I had half a second to see wide eyes before I found myself seized around the waist and dragged down into the bed.

“Phaelin!”

“You won’t touch her,” he said, with more venom than I’d ever heard from him in life. “You won’t touch any of them!”

Understanding crashed over me like a wave. Phaelin hadn’t just been dreaming; he’d been reliving this summer’s siege. When off-worlders had tried to hold half the court ransom.

He’d pinned me underneath him, half on and half off the bed. One of my arms was still free. I raised it to the side of his face. “Phaelin,” I said softly. “It’s me. It’s Callie.”

His whole body was trembling. Slowly, he lifted his head. “Callie?”

I nodded. “You’re safe. You’re at the estate.”

He peered into my eyes for a long moment, as if he couldn’t quite believe I was there.

“I thought… I thought you were dying.”

“Not today,” I said, with a forced smile. “Though maybe if you don’t get off of me…”

He rolled off me and flopped back into the bed on his back. For a long few moments, he stared up at the ceiling, scrubbing at his eyes with the palm of his hand.

“What are you doing here, Callie?”

“I heard you screaming,” I said. “I thought you were being attacked.”

“And you came to save me.” He didn’t sound enthusiastic about the prospect.

I pulled my legs underneath me so that I could sit up. “You sounded like you were in pain. I wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

“I’m fine.”

I didn’t contradict him. I just sat there, on his bed, waiting.

He let out a breath through his nose. “I… have nightmares sometimes. I see that day.”

“I do too, sometimes.”

His lips twisted. “Do you ever wake up trying to strangle your pillow?”

I looked down. “No.”

Phaelin covered his face with his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m like this. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“It’s okay.”

“It isn’t,” he said. “Nothing happened to me. I shouldn’t be like this.”

I traced the edge of a sheet for a moment. “Did I ever tell you about the first firefight I got in?”

Phaelin lifted a hand to peer at me. “No?”

I smiled sadly. “We were stealing something from one of the mob families on Kaparia. It was going good… until it wasn’t. I was in the ship with the last of the cargo when all of the sudden, all I could hear was blaster fire.

“I ran to the door. The hangar had been dark when I’d left it, but now there was enough blaster fire going off to light it up. I could see individual screws in the opposite door, it was that bright. Korr and Tiona—our landing crew—were pinned down behind a couple of barrels. Five or six guys in armor were advancing on them from the door.”

Phaelin was staring up at the ceiling. “Is this story actually supposed to make me feel better? I don’t need to hear about you saving the day.”

“That’s not…” I hissed a breath out through my nose. “I didn’t save the day, you moron. I saw all that blaster fire flying through the air, and I turned tail and ran. It was too much for me. The captain took the assailants out with a ship-to-ship cannon. I didn’t do jack shit.”

Phaelin’s gaze flickered to me. “Really.”

“Really,” I said. “No one’s first instinct is to run straight at the danger. It’s stupid, and it will get you killed. You have to be a real fucking moron to see a guy with a gun and tackle him to the floor.”

“You did it, though.”

“Because I’m a real fucking moron,” I said with a smile.

Phaelin rolled his eyes, but I saw the smile he was trying to hide.

I interlaced my fingers with his. He started at the touch, but I didn’t withdraw my hand. “When those men came to Anapoli, you’d barely even seen a blaster before. You’d never been in combat, you didn’t have a whit of training at all. And despite all of it, you had my back. I’m alive because of you, Phaelin. The crown princess, Aralia and her baby—we’re all still here because of you.”

He frowned at me, but not in the pinched, judging way I was used to. Somehow, in the past few months, I’d broken through to the true Phaelin. The one that hid behind his sharp insults and fierce disdain.

“I feel like a coward.”

I shook my head. “You’re not.”

“Then why do I keep having these nightmares? Why do I keep waking up screaming?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Phaelin’s jaw worked. “You can say it. It’s because I’m weak.”

My eyes rolled so hard that I nearly fell over. I flopped down on the bed next to Phaelin. “Stop it, you relentless drama queen.”

His mask of disdain snapped back in place. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” I poked him in the side. “You’re not weak, and you know it.”

“I pour out my soul to you, and this is how you repay me?”

I poked him again, harder this time. “I know you’re not going to just get over it. It was terrible. A rotten, traumatic day. But you know you’re not weak. You know you’re not cowardly.”

“I don’t,” he said.

I wrapped my arms around him. “I do.”

He didn’t have an easy response to that. Slow, I felt his muscles start to relax. He shifted to drape an arm around my waist.

“Are you going to stay?”

My eyelids were already growing heavy. The warmth from his body was a perfect shield against the cold air blowing in through the window. “Sure,” I mumbled. “Why not?”

He pulled me closer. His breath hushed out against the back of my neck. “Don’t even think about snoring.”

I choked back a stifled laugh. “No promises,” I said against the pillow. “Absolutely none.”

**Author's Note:**

> For those playing along at home, yes, this is out of order. Day 3 (magic), Day 6 (ocean), and Day 9 (illness) are in progress but unfinished because ya girl likes to overwrite like, a lot. I haven't started Day 8 (eight), but it's on my list.


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